A new platform for Lysacek: Skating show honors life of longtime friend

September 26, 2008|By Philip Hersh | Tribune staff reporter

He has won two national championships and two bronze medals at the world championships, and he barely missed a bronze at the 2006 Winter Olympics.

And yet Evan Lysacek calls the most significant accomplishments of his figure skating career -- past, present and future -- the things those titles and medals have allowed him to do for others, like the "Evening of Hope" skating show he headlines Saturday night at the Fox Valley Ice Arena in west suburban Geneva."As a successful athlete, I have a platform and an opportunity to work with people from non-profit organizations who are trying to make the world a better place, and doing that is the biggest achievement of my career," Lysacek said Thursday before he did a stint to benefit the Make-a-Wish Foundation as a celebrity ice cream scooper at the North Wells Street Cold Stone Creamery.

Saturday's event has special meaning for Lysacek because it honors the life of his Naperville childhood friend, Stephanie Joseph, who died Feb. 19 of soft-tissue sarcoma, a disease she battled since age 8 and which had been in remission for nearly 10 years. Joseph, also a skater, was a 21-year-old University of Missouri junior when she died.

Several other big-name skaters, including world singles champions Jeffrey Buttle of Canada and Kimmie Meissner of the U.S., Olympic silver-medal ice dancers Tanith Belbin (Lysacek's girlfriend) and Ben Agosto (a Chicagoan) and world champion ice dancer Shae-Lynn Bourne of Canada are among the performers donating their time for the show. Proceeds to go Make-A-Wish and the Stephanie Joseph Memorial Fund ( www.stephaniejoseph.com).

Lysacek saw how much it meant to Joseph and her family when Make-A-Wish fulfilled her dream of skating with four-time world champion Kurt Browning more than a decade ago. Lysacek and Joseph had gone to the same elementary school, middle school and high school (Neuqua Valley), though two years apart, and they began skating at the same time.

"We were part of a little group of skaters who were inseparable," said Lysacek, who has skated with Make-A-Wish children several times. "Stephanie was the kind of person, when she was a young adult, who you would go to for comfort, who would make you laugh, who you would ask for advice.

"You just wanted to be around her. She didn't have a negative bone in her body, even while fighting cancer."

That is why Lysacek, 23, has been bouncing back and forth between his training base in Los Angeles and the Chicago area to plan Saturday's gala, even though he is less than a month from the start of the competitive season and still has some lingering pain from the elbow and shoulder dislocation that led him to withdraw from the 2008 worlds.

Swelling remains above his left elbow despite repeated attempts to drain it. He feels occasional shoulder pain but said it does not affect the arm movement necessary to spin in the air on jumps.

Lysacek recovered enough to skate with the Stars on Ice tour last spring and then compete in the Japan Open, a team event, in mid-April.

"I was motivated to get back for the Japan Open instead of leaving my season with a negative note," he said.

A month later he took off for Moscow to work three weeks with famed Russian coach Tatiana Tarasova, who has choreographed the short and long programs he will use for the first time at Skate America next month in Everett, Wash.

"I asked her to reinvent my style," Lysacek said. "The injury gave me a new outlook on skating and made me want to try some different stuff this year."